Then he did it. He made me shiver with just words. "I want to get as detailed as you want." -- Did he realize what he was saying at the time??! I just half-laughed, and told him to be careful what he said, or else he would get it. Just as he stated his original question, he stated "I never say things I don't mean".

He remembered that moment so well he feared he would never forget it; that its ghost would haunt him in his dreams, its invisible spectre visit him in its waking hours. He knew that so many thousands in the world had been here, in this moment, before, had heard the same words, had felt the same rushing sensation of fear and guilt and shame and that echoing, terrifying numbness that spread like burning ice through every pore of the body, but it was different, here and now, at this moment and time; it was happening to him.

And then that dreadful, silent pause as everyone stared, and the boss, with one last, furious look, had stormed back to his office, the fury of his rage still present in the wake he left behind, an angry snake that no one dared offend. And then – and this was what he would hate, would avert his eyes to, would spend the rest of his life trying to ignore, all the bitter hurt and pain of the moment wounding him as no other wound, scarring him as no other scar – slowly the janitor began to swipe his mop across the floor, and conversations resumed, and people went back to work, as if nothing had happened, as if the world had not just ended, as if the future had not just suddenly lost its dull tediousness and had become a minefield, a bombing ground, where every step was uncertain and the consequences grim. He had heard the buzz of conversation resume, and he knew then that he could not stand it.

Four years. Four years he had worked there, had spent his hours, had laughed and joked with friends he knew were only colleagues, had lived there, as much as it was possible to live without any semblance of a life; yet now he was being abandoned, being sent away to fend on his own, as if he had never really mattered, as if it had all just been a game, and not his life on the line. He was hurt and he felt betrayed; he wanted to slash at the walls, scream and rage and shout, make hell and havoc manifest and everyone else feel just one bit of his agony, one iota of his resentment, one drop of the acidic tears he was shedding slowly inside, but he knew he could not – he was much too calm, too quiet, too much of a loser to ever give vent to the violence that bubbled and frothed and simmered inside – and quickly he packed his box and left that hateful room.

All the misery of the world seemed to settle on him as he walked down the long hallway to the elevator, as he rode down to the lobby, as he left the great glass doors of the building behind. He was thirty-one years old, with nothing creditable to his name. He had never had a girlfriend. He had no friends. He was fat. He was balding. He was a failure, who had managed to survive only thus far through luck and bumbling serendipity. He was not smart. He was a nonentity of no significance, as remarkable as the next man in the crowd, as worth remembering as the sunsets that people never saw, the ordinary, everyday things of no consequence and no effort. No ambition, no desire, no nothing; just one more of the tens of thousands of millions of humans who populated the Earth.

It was not surprising that he should be fired, or have never had a girlfriend, or never been subject to the passion and frenzy that seized every great man by the shoulders and thrust them into fame and power and status. All his life he had gone through the rituals, the trials, the tribulations as was expected. At school, he was never extraordinary. At college, he was only average. He was not the best, or the brightest, or even the worst or the least academically inclined; even that would have been too much of a distinction for him. He was just in the middle, always in the middle.

With a sigh, he turned left around the coroner.

There was his home, a miserable wreck of an apartment whose interior bore no displays, no sign of human habitation, save a bed and a desk and a few utensils. He felt disgust swell in him, contempt for himself and the miserable human that he was – and despair overwhelmed him, and he sat down on the steps of the staircase, and he sobbed. He wept. He wailed. He could not help it; he cried, and let the tears bleed down his face, warm and salty, though no one would care, he thought with a fragile intensity –

He said it brutally, simply, without pretence, without ambiguity. Well? If the child wanted an answer, he would give it to him. Why disguise the truth in pretty lies? One day he too would feel like this, and there was no point in hiding the future from those who would live it.

And all the while, the child just kept listening, his head cocked to the side, his brow furrowed as all the woes and hurts of an overgrown child struck their plaintive tone on his ears, as if thinking through some vast and deeply complex problem. He never moved all the time the story was told, made no movement as he paused to draw one ragged breath after another, was silent all the while he spoke himself hoarse, and only when he finished did he speak again, in a vexed and puzzled voice:

“When I was a baby, Mom and Dad used to take me everywhere they went. They used to fly around a lot, and they showed me lots of things. They told me they showed me the sunset the way it’s seen in Japan, the sea and the beach in California, the big buildings in Hong Kong. But, mister, I don’t remember any of that stuff. Every year I tell them I want to go again, they make it sound so exciting, but they tell me I’ve already seen it once; I don’t have to see it again. Mister, I’d love to be like you right now. You’ve got all the time to do what you want. You’ve got everything you need, and I’ll be your friend if you’re sad about not having any. Heck, you could probably get yourself another job if you tried, if it’s important to you. So why are you sad, mister? There’s nothing to be sad about.”